


An Ariadnean Thread

by Thaliona



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Multi, Post Civil War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-07 15:30:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6811132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thaliona/pseuds/Thaliona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While on the run from the C.I.A., Sharon finds out the truth concerning Peggy's souvenir from Nazi Germany. A truth that might help traverse the labyrinth made of Bucky's mind. However, the fractured Avengers might soon be up against something truly terrifying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Flight To Catch

**Author's Note:**

> I've been mulling over this for a long while now, and seeing Civil War brought it back up so...why not. I haven't decided if Peggy is Sharon's aunt or great-aunt yet. Will eventually get that sorted out.

_Venice_  
_Present Day_

They’d finally cornered her. She’d expected them to take longer, but apparently, the government could be efficient when it felt like it. Back quite-literally pressed against a wall, Sharon bid her time, trying to formulate a plan. 

What would Peggy do?

Not have gotten into this mess for starters. Well, then again, it was his fault. So maybe Peggy would be in this position. She pursed her lips at the thought – the memory – of kissing him. Late. It had been late. He’d always been late. For her and her great-aunt. Was it wrong of her to have felt this way? Was it wrong of him? She’d always been infatuated with Captain America. No living man could live up to her expectations fostered by her aunt’s stories.

He wasn’t what she’d expected. Captain America was human. He was Steve Rogers, a kid from Brooklyn. Peggy had loved Steve, not Captain America. Likewise Sharon idolized Captain America growing up, but she’d betrayed the CIA for Steve.

She needed to keep moving but there was nowhere to go. The empty ally leading to the Piazza San Marco wasn’t really an exit. No. It was a funnel towards a prison cell. No doubt, they were waiting for her in the crowd, on the rooftops. Waiting for her to grow impatient. Waiting for her to take a chance. The glock in her hand felt heavier than usual – a trick of the mind, no doubt, adding the weight of her guilt to the weight of the gun. 

Click. 

Click. 

Sharon’s eyes widened at the familiar sound. The clicking belonged to the heels of black and white Oxford shoes. She’d recognize the click of that gait anywhere. With all the trepidation of a child checking under their bed for a monster, Sharon slowly turned to confirm the impossible. 

For five years, Sharon had mulled over all the things she’d say to the woman in the Oxford shoes if given the chance. Angry words. Loving words. Last words denied to her by circumstance. Agent 31 died in the line of duty. Her file read ‘Deceased.’ Another S.H.I.E.L.D. agent saw the killing blow. There had been no body to bury, but they'd held a funeral anyway. Sharon had held her aunt’s hand as the woman cried silently into a handkerchief while they lowered an empty casket into the ground. 

But Agent 31 she stood in those damnable, out-dated shoes. 

As a child, Sharon remembered following after the click of those shoes like an ardent puppy. Next to her aunt, her cousin told the best stories, would play the most make-believe adventures with her. Minna Carter had seemed so much bigger then, but now, staring at her standing there in the alley, she seemed so diminished almost. Minna had always been petite, but something about her always filled a room. Even after puberty decided that Sharon should tower over Minna, Sharon still felt small standing next to her cousin. There was a vastness trapped in the diminutive frame, a black hole ensnared in a test tube. 

Perhaps physically lesser now, Minna still wore the same expression that brandished a somber tranquility to rival that of the Madonna of Bruges. The unnaturally blue eyes still unsettled Sharon. She’d been frightened of them as a child, especially so upon realizing they reflected light in the dark like an animal. Only later in life, around the same time she learned they were not actually related, did Sharon come to realize just how much Minna hated the blue eyes too. She had not been born with them, but rather, they had been given to her as an unwanted gift intended to mold her into a madman's vision of perfection.

Sharon leaned heavily against the wall, adrenaline from the chase replaced with grief-laden exhaustion. At a loss of words and unable to keep looking at the ghost-that-wasn’t, she chose to stare down at her boots – far more practical footwear than Oxfords. 

“Sharon, we need to—“ 

“You missed her funeral.” Her own words sounded distant, as if someone else spoke them. 

“Funerals are for the living to say goodbye to the deceased. We’d already said our goodbyes.” So spoken without even a slight wavering of regret. 

“Our family needed you. I needed you,” She hissed heatedly through grit teeth and was satisfied to see something like guilt flicker across the porcelain face of the dead woman. Formerly dead woman. Seemingly, formerly dead woman. “Why?” She pushed herself off the wall, easily covering the distance that had seemed so far between them a moment before. “Did she know the truth or did you lie to her too?” Anger lessened her caution, but she still kept her voice low.

“I told her my plans. No one else knew. It wasn’t a sanctioned mission.” Minna fired off the facts like bullets from a gun. No frills. No details. No reasons. She was always so matter-of-fact. 

Sharon blinked back hot tears she hadn’t realized were forming. So, Peggy had lied to her too. Those tears had seemed so real. That grief…and maybe it had been real. Her aunt always seemed to fear for Minna, as if some great doom lurked in the shadows, biding its time to consume the delicate woman Peggy loved so dearly. There had always been secrets. For every story Sharon had been told, she knew there were countless more. Moreover, whatever she was told were only half-truths. There was an essence of the truth. A trace of smoke but no sight of the fire.

“I truly am sorry, Sharon, and I will explain things, answer any question you have, but we need to keep moving,” Minna gently cooed, much like when she’d comforted Sharon as a child. A small hand gripped Sharon’s arm, breaking the last physical barrier. Sharon nearly pulled back, the touch so very real and startling. “Please, liebelein. We must go,” Threads of desperation wove themselves into the words, startling Sharon back into reality. 

“Agents are trailing me—“ Sharon surveyed the rooftops, gaze drifting to the milling crowd in the Piazza. 

“Were.” Minna casually interrupted with the correction, as if discussing a slight change in weather, “but others will come, and more importantly, we have a flight to catch.”

"A flight to where?" Not that it mattered. She was a fugitive on the run. Anywhere was better than a submerged prison in the Pacific. Sharon half-expected Minna not to answer but followed her cousin anyway when the little mouse of a woman motioned for Sharon to follow.

"Wakanda."


	2. A New Game

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A flashback to the beginning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bare with me while I build up background. <3

**Germany**  
**1935**

The room was so sterile breathing in the air stung her nose. Her feet couldn’t reach the floor. The back of her legs kept brushing against the cold metal of the chair as they swung back and forth. She wanted to go home. She wanted to get out of these overly starched, bleached white clothing that scratched her skin. She wanted her mother.

“If you girls behave, you’ll get to see your mother,” The kindly looking man in the coat spoke softly, offering an encouraging smile. He wanted them to speak, to answer his questions and play his games, but the twins rarely spoke to anyone. Their father often worried that they were daft, but their mother knew otherwise. Frau Ulreich always said her daughters shared the same soul split into two bodies. Words weren’t necessary between them and that translated to their other interactions. Her bright little birds, she’d call them, as they flittered about playing their childhood games – content to their world of two. Perhaps, the matron would admit, her girls were slightly odd, but she loved them as she did all her children. If anything was certain, they were far too clever for their own good. 

_“He’s a liar.”_ The voice that was not her own interrupted her thoughts longing for home. Her twin tightened the grip between their interlocked fingers.

 _“But maybe...”_ Minna thought to her sister, clinging to hope that maybe there was a chance. Her display of hope was rewarded with a side-glance from Marta – only eight years old and already a master of somber gravitas. 

Their mother had been right. There was something odd about her children. However, they didn’t think it odd. It was simply the way that they were, and for the majority of their short lives, they’d assume every twin shared their connection. As they grew older, they realized that catching glimpses of other people’s thoughts was decidedly not normal. There were other things they could do, especially when they tried together, but they could not get out of this sterile room with the lying man. 

If they did not answer, he would come again tomorrow and ask the same questions. It wouldn’t last forever. Even though they didn’t grasp the depth of their situation, the girls knew that the man in the white coat would grow tired of their games. 

“We can tell you girls are very special. Wouldn’t you like to see how special you can be?” In contrast to his sweetly toned words, Minna could tell his thoughts were dark. Special. She did not like the way he lingered on that word. Neither girl wanted to meet this man’s expectations for special.

“If the answer is yes, we will get to see our mother?” Minna broke the twin’s silence with the soft question. Marta tensed at her side, still keeping her vow of stony silence. 

This pleased the man, who hummed in satisfaction, “of course, mauschen, of course. You’ll get to see your mother, but let’s play a little game first. I like to call it Cat and Mouse.” And so the games began.


End file.
